‘Nature makes people happy, that’s what it sort of means:’ children’s definitions and perceptions of nature in rural Northwestern Ontario

ABSTRACT

Nature exposure positively impacts children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive health and development. We know less about how children perceive their connection with nature and what nature means to them. This study uses focus groups to understand how rural Canadian children define, experience, and perceive benefits of nature. Using thematic analysis, we identified three primary themes. First, while children associate nature with specific activities, natural elements, and locations, they also conceptualize nature as ‘a whole community.’ Second, children experienced nature through doing, highlighting how activities connected them with nature while recognizing constraints on those engagements. Finally, children demonstrated agency in accessing nature to improve their emotional states. These findings indicate that from children’s views, nature is more than just space with natural elements. Children are also knowledgeable about the health benefits of nature, and capitalize on this knowledge. These findings can inform interventions to increase children’s interactions with outdoor environments.

KEYWORDS:

• children
• nature
• focus groups
• rural
• health
• qualitative

Acknowledgements

We would first like to thank all schools, principals, teachers, and most importantly students involved in this project. Thank you to the Children’s Health Foundation for funding through the Children’s Health Research Institute to support the completion of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Stephanie E. Coen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3939-8792

Jason A. Gilliland http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2909-2178

Notes

1 The purpose of this step was to inform parents about the project before their children, to provide them the option of blocking their child from hearing about the project before they themselves got to hear about the project, as to comply with the university’s ethics board request.

2 Based on local knowledge of the focus group moderator, ‘the bush’ was used to describe areas of the natural environment where people hunt, or what may be more commonly referred to as a ‘forest’.

3 Quads and trikes are colloquial names for motorized 4-wheel and 3-wheel all terrain vehicles, respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Children’s Health Research Institute through the Quality of Life Initiative and Children’s Heart Health Initiative funded by the Children’s Health Foundation.